What Happened In Second Week Of Alexanders’ Trial

The Alexanders’ defense team turned up the heat during the second week of the brothers’ federal sex trafficking trial.

More than 10 witnesses testified in a downtown Manhattan courtroom as part of this week’s proceedings, including federal agents, a medical toxicologist and two women who alleged they were drugged and raped by one or more of the brothers.

Prosecutors also showed emails, texts and social media messages between the Alexanders and other men discussing securing drugs such as MDMA, Ambien and GHB ahead of trips. The exchanges get at the government’s claims that the brothers worked together to entice women to travel and to drug and rape them once they arrived.

As prosecutors work to establish their allegations, the defense looked to downplay the interactions as hookups gone wrong and highlight discrepancies in the women’s accounts of the alleged attacks.

The Alexanders have denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Another Hamptons attack

Among the women to take the stand this week was a woman who testified under the pseudonym Bela Koval, who alleges she was attacked by Oren in the Hamptons in 2016. Her account of which forms the basis of counts three and four, which charge Oren, Alon and Tal with sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and inducement to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity.

Teny Geragos, an attorney for Oren, grilled Koval on Tuesday over the details of her testimony about being drugged and raped by him in the Hamptons in 2016.

During the hours-long cross-examination, Geragos pointed to inconsistencies in the account Koval initially shared with prosecutors and the one she told the jury, including what she was wearing at the time of the attack, the timeline of the evening leading up to it and what she did in the following days.

“You testified yesterday to several things that are absolutely different than the story that you first told the government for approximately a year and a half, isn’t that right?” Geragos asked.

“My truth never changed,” Koval explained. “I was telling the truth the entire time.”

Koval claimed that she traveled to the Hamptons after the brothers invited her and her friend, Allyson, to join them for the weekend. She said the brothers paid for her and Allyson’s flights to New York City, along with other travel accommodations and activities once in the area.

Prosecutors read a text exchange between the Alexanders from the day before Koval and her friend flew to New York.

“Are we booking flights? First 3 on left,” Oren wrote. Alon replied, “we can split and try to orgy them out.” Tal said, “agreed.”

The brothers threw a party at the house, where, after taking a few sips of a drink Oren had given her, she said she began to feel like she was losing control of her limbs. Alarmed by the sensation, she said she tried to get back to the bedroom she was staying in when Alon found her and steered her toward another room she hadn’t seen before. There, she alleges she was unable to move or fight Oren off as he raped her.

During the cross-examination, Geragos said that when Koval first told prosecutors about the alleged attack, she said she was wearing a black lace cover-up and a strapless bathing suit, which she remembered Oren pulling down before the attack and waking up in the morning with it still around her ankles.

However, during her testimony, Koval said that after prosecutors showed her photos from the party, she realized she must have changed into a maroon jumpsuit, though she doesn’t remember the physical act of swapping outfits. She reiterated that the memory she has is of Oren pulling her clothes down her body, which she said is the same motion he would have used to remove the jumpsuit.

Koval also initially told prosecutors that she did not join Oren and his brothers on a boat the afternoon after the attack, though photos of the day revealed that she did.

“You’re not sure about a lot of things that happened that night, you said, right?” Geragos asked, which earned her a reprimand from the presiding Judge Valerie Caproni.

“My memory is just capsulated [sic] on being drugged and raped,” Koval said. “That’s what my focus is on. All these insignificant details to me are just in the past.”

Koval testified that after the boat, she and Allyson left the house to stay with “a friend of a friend” who was also in the Hamptons that weekend. That friend of a friend was Mikey Ashkenazy, the founder of 101 Holdings and the brother of billionaire developer Ben Ashkenazy.

Geragos pressed Koval on why she would go to “another house filled with men that you didn’t know” instead of going to a hotel or back to Manhattan.

“Anything would be better than staying in a house full of rapists,” Koval replied.

Rhonda Stone and the Groove Cruise

The other, who testified under the pseudonym Rhonda Stone, alleges she was raped by Oren and Alon while on a party cruise in 2012. Stone is identified in the indictment as “Victim 7” and connected to counts 10 and 11, which charge the twins with aggravated sexual abuse by force, threat or intoxicant and sexual abuse by physical incapacitation.

Prosecutors showed messages between Oren, Alon and some of their friends mentioning that music producer Sir Ivan Wilzig was also planning to join them on the cruise. Wilzig, who owns a medieval-style mansion in the Hamptons, has been named as a defendant in two civil lawsuits against one or more of the Alexanders, though he hasn’t been accused of assault.

On the second night of the cruise, Stone claimed she was looking to buy MDMA for her friends when she met the twins. She went with them and a woman to a private cabin, where she said she started to feel “extremely” intoxicated after consuming a drink and began to lose her memory, recalling only specific scenes that came to her in flashes.

Stone described the first of those flashes as coming back to consciousness while lying naked on the bed with one of the twins on top of her. She said she saw the brunette woman lying on her back on the other bed in the room with the other brother on top of her. She said the twins, who she couldn’t tell apart at the time, switched places.

“I felt paralyzed and shocked, embarrassed,” Stone said.

The next thing she remembers was struggling to put her clothes back on and picking up money that had been scattered on the floor. She said that at the time, she thought the money was the $500 one of her friends had given her to use to purchase MDMA, though she later realized she had picked up an additional $400.

Stone said she spent the rest of the night and early morning searching for her friends, who she eventually reunited with on the deck for the sunrise DJ set. Photos of her from that morning show her dancing and posing with her friends, though Stone said she doesn’t remember much of the event aside from feeling like she couldn’t keep her balance and that she was “falling out” of her shoes.

Stone said she didn’t tell her sister or anyone else about the assault at the time. Instead, after her sister asked her where she’d been, she replied, “I got stuck having sex with twins,” telling the court her friends took it as a joke and didn’t question her. It wasn’t until after the brothers were arrested in December 2024 that she told her sister and federal authorities what had happened to her.

After her initial testimony, one of Alon’s attorneys, Howard Srebnick, pressed Stone about the $400 she’d left the room with, asking her where she’d found the money and whether she’d had to “search through the cabinets” or “[go] through someone’s wallet” to find it.

“I was having trouble picking up money, and I assumed it was the money that I had brought into the cabin,” Stone said. “I thought I’d picked it up off the floor.”

Srebnick asked Stone about social media messages she exchanged with Alon the day the cruise ended, but she said she didn’t remember the conversation. Stone also accepted a Facebook friend request from Oren two weeks after the cruise ended.

Srebnick probed Stone about her drug and alcohol use. He asked her if she’d ever done MDMA in her life, which she acknowledged she’d tried a “handful of times,” though she described the effects as significantly different than the way she felt the night she was allegedly attacked. He also asked her if she’d ever “blacked out” from drinking alcohol before, which she said she had.

Srebnick also pressed Stone on the timeline of that evening, though she replied multiple times that she couldn’t be sure of how long she was in the room with Oren, Alon and the other woman and how long it took her to find her friends.

Srebnick ended his cross-examination by asking Stone about her time on the Groove Cruise the following year, during which Stone acknowledged using MDMA and drinking alcohol. Srebnick asked her if she recalled climbing a set of speakers on the ship that year while in her bathing suit. Stone said she did and described it as a “joke with a friend.”
At the end of her testimony, Stone said she “blamed” herself for following the brothers to the cabin.

“It’s not something I normally would ever do,” Stone said. When asked why she decided to testify, Stone replied, “I just felt compelled to share my experience.”